The hype has been so extensive, you'd be forgiven for thinking Lady Gaga's new record, Born This Way, was released several months ago – but no, it is not out until Monday. The reviews, however, are already pouring in – and not even a sanguineous meat dress or a lobster hat can protect the world's most shameless attention-seeker from Britain's music critics.
Opinion, so far, is divided. In the NME, Dan Martin describes the album as "a relentless torrent of heavy-metal-rave-pop"; he's impressed by the empowerment anthem Hair – "quite the gayest thing you will ever hear for a long time" – and describes The Edge of Glory as "the most ecstatic pop serenade this woman has ever come up with".
The Guardian's own Tim Jonze is similarly positive. He's bemused that Lady Gaga "can be the most exciting, confounding and mind-bogglingly creative artist on planet pop while still sounding like an early-90s Tampax advert" – but he admires the way the record's "pop vision" embraces both politics (Americano considers Arizona's immigration laws, underpinned by Latin beats) and "shameless, club-orientated pop".
Harry Clayton-Wright, writing for Gay Times, is less convinced. Born This Way, the title track and self-confessed "gay anthem", is "a song to wear your hot pants, sequinned boob tube and strut around to in your mum's high heels", while Government Hooker "will have you writhing sexily in your seat". But the compliments stop there. "Greatest album of this decade?" he sneers. "By God no, there's only two tracks we really liked."
In the Times, Will Hodgkinson goes further. Giving the album just two stars, he calls The Edge of Glory "a horrible rock ballad of the kind that even Cher would dismiss as bad taste", and says Born This Way is "so squarely aimed at Lady Gaga's gay audience that you suspect she would have roped in John Inman to trill 'I'm free' somewhere around the second verse, were he still with us". His conclusion? "Born This Way is the album equivalent of a finely cooked meal," he says, "with a load of tomato ketchup splurged all over it."
